


A Chain of Light

by FireflysLove



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2019-02-22 11:15:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13165779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FireflysLove/pseuds/FireflysLove
Summary: The sequel to The Force Awakens that I don't hate, in which Luke is Luke, Rey is an actual Jedi, and the entire Resistance doesn't get Demolished.The Last Jedi but better.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> General TLJ moaning, but also I'm bitching about the things Rian Johnson ruined with this movie. 
> 
> Special appearances by OCs, Force ghosts of all your faves, way too much speculation about lightsabers and the Force, and probably a great deal of handwavery.

Luke sensed the girl coming from lightyears away.

The Force was a subtle thing most of the time, but sometimes more like a lightsaber to the arm in its… intent. Luke had never been sure if the Force was a sentient thing or if things it did that seemed sentient were merely a reflection of his own will.

Either way, falling out of a meditative trance and whacking his head on his own knee because his dearest friend was killed by his own son isn’t very subtle. Luke had harbored a certainty for several decades, at the very least since the incident at the Sarlaac pit that Han had been Force sensitive, not that he’d ever mentioned it to Han, since the act would likely have gotten him mercilessly mocked for the idea.

The ripple through their Force connection that Han’s death caused confirmed it for Luke, he’d only felt that kind of gaping void a few times in his life, always at someone’s death, most lately at the destruction of his Temple, but before that, Anakin Skywalker’s death. Not Obi-Wan’s, or Yoda’s, but both had died if not peacefully, at least at peace with the idea of their own passing. And a remnant of their Force-bond in life had remained in death. A Force-bond could be formed with any being, Force sensitive or not, but the kind he’d had with Han had been the kind he’d had with other Jedi, and the kind he had with Leia… and her son.

He could sense a nascent, or perhaps latent, bond with the girl that had been building over the few days (had it only been days?) since … whatever had dropped a metaphorical rock in the metaphorical pond of the Force. Luke was going to have to ask the girl what the kriffing hell had been going on.

But first.

First.

He’d have to actually meet her, of course. Ahch-To was a mostly aquatic planet, and the island itself was a small place. There was only one place the ship, and he was certain somehow that it was the Falcon, could safely land, right at the base of the staircase that eventually terminated in the Overlook. There was a spot, about two thirds of the way up the island, that would be just the place. The wind there often blew in just the right direction to blow his robe dramatically, and the light would cast his hooded face in shadow at this time of day.

So Luke clambered up to a cliff facing west, on his way, he passed the other human inhabitant of the island. She nodded at him, and moved off in the general direction of the village.

The sight of the Falcon moving in through the clouds set a knot in the pit of Luke’s stomach. It has been a very long time since he’d seen that ship, and the last time hadn’t been a happy one. It’s worse considering the words he had left Han with, sharp and caustic things he’d regretted immediately, but it’s years too late to take that back now. He was going to have to work with whatever comes off that ship.

The girl was a small figure at the base of the stairs, and he could practically feel her gathering her wits about her to climb. She began the ascent, and his heart beat in time with her footsteps. It took nearly half an hour for her to draw level with him, by which time he has the peace of mind he hadn’t had when she’d begun. Luke wasn’t sure what he expected her to do, but pulling his lightsaber, his _first_ lightsaber out of her bag and proffering it to him sure isn’t it.

He took it, by reflex more than anything else. His mechanical hand grasped the hilt, the hand that had been holding this object the last time he’d seen it, before it went tumbling into the depths of Cloud City along with his right hand. Luke had forgotten how badly balanced the hilt was, especially compared to his second lightsaber.

He had realized, in constructing his second lightsaber, based on Obi-Wan’s last ‘saber, that the reason _this_ ‘saber had never worked for him was because he was not his father. Darth Vader, and Luke assumed Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker, had preferred a very aggressive fighting style, all offense. Luke on the other hand, favored a more moderate approach similar to the one he had first learned from Obi-Wan. Being that the ‘saber fit the wielder, it hadn’t surprised him when he ended up with a ‘saber based on Obi-Wan’s. Only that it had been green. He hadn’t been expecting that.

This ‘saber, though. This ‘saber practically rippled with history. It was at least fifty years old, and from what Obi-Wan had told him of his and Anakin’s life before the fall of the Old Republic, it was probably closer to sixty. Anakin, like all Jedi, had constructed his lightsaber himself, with a unique kyber crystal at its heart. The kyber crystal was what really made the ‘saber connect with its Jedi, and the harmonics in this ‘saber had always grated on Luke, and Luke never realized it until he had a lightsaber that _didn’t_ make him want to throw it down a trash chute every ten seconds. To be holding it again was… interesting to say the least.

His own ‘saber was in his dwelling, there was very little to be afraid of on Ahch-To, and none of that could be defeated with a lightsaber anyway. The Force within Luke almost visibly bent around the ‘saber, away from it as best it could, and suddenly the hilt grew very, very hot. Luke threw it away by another reflex before realizing that he shouldn’t have been able to feel that kind of _heat_ through the synthetic nerves in his hand. They were specifically designed to prevent pain like that.

The girl, forgotten for a moment amongst Luke’s musings, gasped, and reached for the fallen cylinder. Her fingers wrapped around it, and the Force within her bent _toward_ the ‘saber.

“I think it likes you,” Luke said.

“Huh?” she said, looking back up at him.

“The ‘saber. I think it likes you,” Luke repeated, patiently.

“How can a lightsaber _like_ someone?” she asked suspiciously.

“The Force is mysterious,” Luke said, winking.

The girl just looks confused.

“I apologize, I have been rude, I have not introduced myself,” Luke said.

“I know who you are,” the girl said. “You’re _Luke Skywalker_.”

Luke sighed internally, he’d come here in part to escape being LukeSkywalkerSaviorOfTheGalaxy, hoping to be only Luke once again, but alas, that was not in the Force’s will.

“You have me at a disadvantage then,” he said. “I don’t know who you are.”

“Oh!” she said. “Sorry. I’m Rey.”

“Just Rey?” Luke asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Just Rey.”

“You’ve come a long way, Rey.”

“I came to find you. The Resistance sent me, they need you, we need you to come back, we need Luke Skywalker.”

“That’s what I was afraid of,” Luke said. He turned away from Rey, facing out toward the setting suns. He’d known this day would come, when Snoke overpowered the Republic, and since the death of the Hosnian system, something even Force-null people might have been able to sense, he’d known that day would come soon. He’d just expected it to be Leia doing the asking.

“Will you come?” Rey asked.

Luke took a deep breath, rich with the salty brine of Ahch-To’s ocean, so different from his native dry, parched Tatooinian air. “Yes,” he said. “But first, I need you to answer a question.”

“What’s that?”

“Why are you here? And not because the Resistance sent you, but why are _you_ here?” Luke turned back to look at her.

“I… don’t know,” she said after a long moment of silence. “There’s … something, a power, growing inside me, and I can’t control it. I’m afraid of it, and I don’t know what to do.”

Luke reached out and put his left hand on her shoulder. “Welcome to the club, kid,” he said.

“You’ve felt like this?” she asked incredulously.

“All the time. I only pretend to know what I’m doing. But I have had _some_ teaching,” Luke said. “I can show you a few things, before we leave the island. I thought I could resist going back, but… I can’t, there’s too much hope left in me, somehow it hasn’t been burnt out yet.”

“But the Resistance—” Rey started.

“I know,” Luke said. “I can feel the darkness growing. But I can’t send an untrained Force-sensitive out into this without some kind of grounding, and I won’t be able to do it after we leave, there will be no time or space.”

“How long?” Rey asked.

“That depends on you,” Luke replied. “But I think twenty-four rotations. Six galactic standard days, that is.”

“You can train me in six days?” Rey asked suspiciously.

“No, but I can keep you from rending the Force in two,” Luke said. “Most of the training a Jedi gets is practical anyway.”

“Six days,” Rey said. “I can do six days.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which I discuss esoteric Force nonsense and the other Jedi makes an appearance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Throwing TLJ and tbh TFA's plots to the wind and going straight for Maximum Headcanon.
> 
> All of the characters in this chapter understand Shyriiwook, so Chewie's lines are rendered as <>.

“Do you know what the Force is?” Luke hadn’t trained a new Jedi in more than a decade, but the role of teacher came easily back to him.

“It’s the place between and within,” Rey said.

“Where did you hear that?” Luke asked, rather more sharply than he had intended. They were seated, cross-legged and knee-to-knee in the chamber at the highest point of the island. It was a few hours after Rey had arrived, and Luke had wasted no time in starting her training. One of Ahch-To’s suns, the closer and bigger of the two stars, was setting, casting the planet into twilight.

“I’m not sure…” Rey said. “I think it was in a story I heard as a child.”

“That’s old, old Jedi lore,” Luke said. “As old as this island, if I remember correctly. I wonder where you could have heard that… Where are you from?”

“I grew up on Jakku,” Rey said. “Before that… I don’t know. My parents left me there alone when I was five, and I don’t remember much from before that.”

Luke suppressed the urge to jerk in surprise at what Rey had just told him, because no, that wasn’t possible, she had… No. He pushed the matter from his mind, he’d deal with when he had a minute and he wasn’t trying to stop the galaxy from melting down…again. He took a breath, and unclenched his fist.

“Interesting,” he said. “But yes, that’s right, it’s a connection between all things, living and not, and it exists both in the space between these things and within all of them. Some people, we call them Force-sensitive, are able to sense the presence of the Force and, to varying degrees, influence it. The Force in itself isn’t inherently Light or Dark, but there are places and entities whose will is able to use the Force for their own gain or to cause pain and suffering to other beings. That, in my opinion, is what the Dark Side truly is. Not a perversion of something inherently good, but the usage of an amoral Force in a way that damages what is around it. The Light Side, conversely, enhances the life and continued existence of what it touches.”

“So the Dark Side isn’t evil?” Rey asked, not sounding convinced.

“The use of the Force is all in the _intent_ of the Force user,” Luke said. This had always been the most difficult part of training to explain to a new Padawan, and the fact that Rey was an adult would either make it much, much easier, or impossible to continue.

“So if I, say, lift a rock and crush one of those bird things over there,” Rey said, gesturing to the porgs on the cliff just outside the opening to the chamber, “That would be an act of the Dark Side?”

“Yes,” Luke said. “But if the porg were to somehow attack you, and you lifted a rock and crushed it in an act of self-defense?”

“I’m… not sure…” Rey said.

“Exactly. It’s not black and white, or Light and Dark. In that instance, you’re not acting with malice, but you are still taking a life with the Force,” Luke said.

“Nothing can be easy, can it?” Rey muttered to herself.

Luke laughed. “No, no, but that’s what makes life interesting. Can you feel the Force? I don’t just mean as a passive ambient presence, but the way it’s reacting to everything around and in it?”

“I… don’t know,” Rey said.

“I thought so,” Luke said. “Close your eyes. Take a deep breath, and try to clear your mind. Imagine a single drip of water… or maybe a single grain of sand. Focus on that one image. Do you have it?”

Rey nodded after a moment, and Luke took her hand in his, putting a small pebble in her palm.

“Good. This rock is that grain of sand. Can you feel that? Now reach out and turn the stone.” The pebble flipped over in her hand. “What can you tell me about this rock?”

“It’s warm and smooth,” Rey said.

“What does the Force tell you about it?” Luke asked.

“It’s from here, from the floor. This is a place where the Light Side, where good intentions and life spring forth,” Rey said.

Luke removed the pebble from her hand and replaced it with one he drew from a pouch on his belt. “And this one? Not the way it feels, but what does the Force tell you about it?”

Rey scrunched up her face in concentration, and the expression looked sickeningly familiar to Luke, but he shoved that, too, aside. He was here to focus on Rey’s lesson, not to dwell in the past.

“It’s from some place near… but down? Under the island? It’s cold there, and evil intent has dwelled there. Not now, but in a time Before now,” she said after a long period of silence.

Luke took the second pebble from her and tossed it over his shoulder. “You can open your eyes,” he said. When she did, he continued. “Do you understand the purpose of that exercise?”

“Not entirely?” Rey said.

“Tell me what you think I want you to get out of it.”

“That the Force is both? Where there is light there is also dark?” Rey said.

“Exactly! There is balance within the Force. For Light to exist, a Dark has to counter it. When a great Dark rises, a Light must rise to meet it,” Luke said.

“Me?” Rey asked, standing up and backing away from him.

“I don’t know,” Luke said. “It could merely be that you always had a potential for Force-sensitivity and the presence of Ben Solo somehow activated that, or whether you were predestined for this, or if you are doomed to fall to the Dark Side. The Force is mysterious like that.”

“Huh,” Rey said, clearly not sure what she was supposed to reply to that.

“Indeed,” Luke said, standing himself. “That’s the first, and most important lesson. I’m hungry, and your arrival interrupted my usual breakfast.”

“The light on this planet is strange,” Rey said. “What time is it, anyway?”

“What we would consider about mid-day on a planet with a standard rotation,” Luke said. “Ahch-To’s suns have regular risings and settings, but the closer of them, Jeyral, rises and sets every twelve hours. So for six hours during the middle of the day, this side of the planet is lit only by Lito, so it’s darker. The native life sleeps now, for the most part, but Jeyral will rise again in a few hours. They set together in the evening at this latitude, and rise together in Lito’s morning.”

Rey said nothing to this, and Luke realized she was probably only making an offhand comment to full a silence, but he’d never been very adept at social nuances, and let this one pass.

“We can go back to the village and get something to eat. And then I’m going to see if you know how to use that lightsaber you’re carrying,” Luke said.

Rey automatically reached down to where it was hanging from her belt and grabbed it. “I think I have a fair hand,” she said.

“We’ll see,” Luke said, and walked a little faster to hide his smile.

 

* * *

The island was a small place, and for someone who had lived here for years, the presence of more people made it feel cramped. She was hiding in her dwelling, trying to get away from the Girl, the Girl who had come to her home to take Luke away from her, but it was close in here, and she needed to get back out into the fresh air.

She knew, of course, what ship had come here, but it was too difficult for her to go see it. She considered going down to the shore and taking a boat to one of the nearby island to perhaps beat a few rocks into shape, but her plans were interrupted by a knock at her door. She jumped to her feet and pulled the door open to find her doorway filled with seven-and-a-half feet of furry Wookie.

“Uncle Chewie?” she asked, somehow confused to see him here.

<<It’s been a long time,>> Chewie said.

“Too long,” she said. “You… he… why, why, why?” She’d been holding herself together over the last few days, but it collapsed in on itself in that moment, and she collapsed into tears. Chewie pulled her into an embrace with comforting soft roars that didn’t really mean anything. Finally, she pulled herself together again, and wiped her eyes. She was about to say something again when a flash of movement from across the village caught her attention. It was Luke, followed by the Girl.

“Chewie!” Luke said, “What are you doing here?”

<<Someone had to fly the Falcon,>> Chewie said, then pulled Luke into a Wookie-hug.

The Girl looked around herself nervously, and she could see the Girl fidgeting with something hanging from her belt, and it took a moment for the object to resolve itself into a lightsaber. Who _was_ this girl?

“Bre, this is Rey,” Luke said. “Rey, this is Breha Organa.”

“Nice to meet you,” Rey said, nodding at Breha. After a moment, she seemed to consider… “Organa? As in…”

“Yes,” Breha said shortly. “Leia Organa is my mother.”

“Then Kylo…”

Breha turned back into her dwelling, and slammed the door shut behind her, sliding down it, and buried her head in her hands against her knees. She hadn’t kriffed up that badly for a long time, but it had also been a very long time since she’d seen another human soul, and then this Girl had come and now… Well, Breha wasn’t sure what she thought was going to happen. Did she think Rey was going to take her place? Become Luke’s New Best Student? She was being ridiculous and she knew it, but… still.

Breha had _felt_ her father die in the Force. Losing a parent bond was traumatic enough, but coupled with the upheaval of Rey and Chewie’s arrival and Luke’s imminent departure, Breha was suddenly exhausted.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GOD BLESS HISHE, it reignited my passion for this fic.

The ancient forms of lightsaber combat had been lost when the Jedi fell. Luke was the last living soul to have learned from an actual practitioner, and that had been brief and focused on only the basics. There were, of course, some things that translated from other forms of hand-to-hand combat, especially with staves and blades, but the _forms_ were lost to the sands of time. The dead were unwilling to give up at least those secrets. Luke had only two recordings recovered from the Republic of Jedi trainings; one was a treatise on advanced duel wielding, which he found mostly useless, although Breha had studied it at length; the other was what he based the style he had taught on, not precisely the form he _practiced,_ but one that taught a good balance of offence and defense.

Luke tossed Rey a stick to start with. It had the same length and weight as an average lightsaber, and he had used them in his Temple during the brief time he was actually training Younglings in the way of the lightsaber.

She gave it an experimental heft, a twirl, and a wave. The light hit her from behind, and she appeared in silhouette for just a moment, and Luke was struck with a vision from the past of another person doing this, the same forms, the same turns and pivots and parries. Rey was doing the most basic of the forms that Luke knew, a near perfect rendition of the second holorecording. He said nothing, allowing her to finish.

“You’re good at that,” he said.

She shrugged, “I grew up scavenging for food and things to trade for food, you learn to defend yourself pretty quick.”

Luke hefted his own saber stand-in, and without any warning, launched an attack. Rey met him blow-for-blow, the sound of wood clacking on wood echoing across the island. Neither of them had a particular height or strength advantage, and every time Luke tried to press with a slightly different attack, Rey countered in exactly the right way. They went back and forth across the flat place, engaging and disengaging, until Rey moved in a mighty overhead strike that came down on Luke’s mock-saber in just the wrong place, cracking it in two.

He didn’t drop the remaining piece, only out of years of practice of not dropping whatever weapon you still held, but he did hold up his free hand. “I yield!” he said with a laugh.

“Do they usually do that?” Rey asked.

“No,” Luke said. “But they’re also not usually used by fully grown adults who know what they’re doing with a lightsaber. Which... it seems we both are. Do you have it with you?”

Rey retrieved the saber from her bag, and offered it again to Luke.

“Oh no,” Luke said. “It’s yours now. It really doesn’t like me, and the feeling’s mutual. Just… do that first thing you did with the stick with the lightsaber. I have a feeling you don’t need lightsaber training, at least not any that I can give you, but I’d still like to see if you can dance.”

“Dance?” Rey asked.

“The old forms of lightsaber combat were able to be reduced down to basic katas that from what I gather, looked like dances,” Luke said.

She ignited the saber, and it was the same feeling he had had before, only doubly reinforced by the glowing blue of the saber’s blade against the grey of the overcast sky a mirror of a long-past day on another world in what seemed like another life.

He’s shaken out of his reverie by a voice from behind him.

“She’s good at that,” it said.

“It’s a bit spooky how good,” Luke replied, turning his head to acknowledge the speaker.

“Do you know why?” the ghost of Anakin Skywalker asked. He appeared transparent and as blue as Rey’s lightsaber, young as Luke had never known him in life, but as he had generally preferred to appear over the last three decades.

“I have a good idea,” Luke said, turning back to look at Rey. “I’m not sure how it’s possible, but impossibilities aren’t exactly foreign to me. Look what I did to you, after all.”

This brought a surprised snort of laughter out of Anakin. “Indeed,” he said. “You’re going to say it to her, aren’t you?”

“Of course I am,” Luke said. “What kind of Skywalker would I be if I didn’t follow in your footsteps? A bit of a taste for the dramatic, we have.”

“It’s really too bad you never knew your mother,” Anakin said. “She could give me a run for my money sometimes.”

“She still won’t come talk to me?” Luke asked.

“No, she still insists that you have to live your own life and she’ll see you when you’re done with it,” Anakin said. “And I have to respect her choice.”

It was a sore spot between them, and Luke didn’t bother poking it this time. Rey had finished with her form, and turned to Luke for approval.

“Well?”

“Unless you can summon a Jedi Master of old willing to teach you advanced ‘saber combat, there’s nothing more I can teach you,” Luke said.

“He’s not willing to teach?” Rey asked, pointing to Anakin with her saber.

Luke looked at Anakin in surprise. “You can see him? No one can ever see them but me.”

“Sorry,” Anakin said. “I didn’t think she’d be able to see me yet, and no, unfortunately, I can’t teach that. The Force can do a lot of things, but not lightsaber combat. Technically, I’m not even supposed to appear as much as I do, but I was never very good at following rules.”

“Who are you?” Rey asked, but before she even finished, Anakin had disappeared.

“That was… the end of a long story,” Luke said. “I’ll tell it to you, in a few days, but first, let’s go back to the village, I want to talk with Breha about something, and then I have another Force-lesson in mind.”

 

* * *

 

Breha was girding her loins, or, perhaps, Breha was procrastinating. The daughter of Han Solo and Leia Organa and she couldn’t even handle some girl? No, she was an adult, and she was going to deal with this like an adult, and not a petulant child. Her brother had made his choices, and Breha had made hers. This girl, Rey, was just going to have to learn that Breha’s choices were not her brother’s.

Breha was much younger than Ben, over ten years, and had been a surprise to both her parents during one of their “we’re getting along” periods. She had been seven when Luke’s temple fell, but she hadn’t come to Ahch-To for another nine years, and had lived here for the last five.

After the fall, tensions between her parents had risen to almost the breaking point, and Breha had been given, well, not quite an ultimatum, but a choice to stay with Leia and the infant Resistance or to go with Han and Chewie. She had chosen to go with her father, and it was only once her Force abilities had started to manifest that she had left her father, with his blessing, to go try to find her Uncle Luke. She had stolen a ship, an old yellow starfighter that no one was going to miss, and set off to follow the tug of the Force. It had led her here, to Ahch-To, and she had found Luke a surprisingly willing teacher. Said starfighter was set on autopilot into a high orbit that, hopefully, no one would ever notice. She had planned to spend the rest of her life here, despite Luke trying to convince her to go back and help the Resistance.

If he wasn’t going to, she wasn’t going to, and that was that.

But now.

Now something had come and disturbed their peaceful way of life, and Breha was angry. Stewing in her emotions was one of Breha’s strengths, and it took a great deal of effort to pull her out of it.

A knock at her door made Breha jump, and she went to open it. She knew Luke was on the other side, his Force presence was obvious.

“What do you want?” Breha asked, brusquely.

“To talk some sense into you,” Luke said.

“Oh, we are _not_ having this argument again,” Breha replied.

“You can leave or not,” Luke said. “I’m leaving in four days, it’s high time I got off my ass and stopped feeling sorry for myself. If you want to come with us, another Jedi would be welcome, and I’m sure your _mother_ would be glad to see you again.”

He did know how to turn the knife to make her come, didn’t he?

“I’ll think about it,” Breha said. “But I _don’t_ have to like her.”

“That’s fine,” Luke said, “but I think you’ll find reason to.”

Breha still felt like she was in the wrong, a petulant child, but there wasn’t much she could do about her own feelings… so she meditated.

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr: @anakinslefthand
> 
> Title inspired by madamebadger's [A Chain of Light](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1426591)


End file.
